Thursday, 18 October 2018

The English Concert is celebrating its 45th anniversary

The English Concert is celebrating its 45 anniversary year. Now directed by Harry Bicket, the ensemble was founded in 1973 by harpsichordist Trevor Pinnock and they gave their first concert at the Purcell Rooms. To celebrate the anniversary the ensemble returned to the Southbank, to the re-furbished Queen Elizabeth Hall on 11 October 2018 where forte pianist Kristian Bezuidenhout, the group's new guest director, to perform a programme of CPE Bach, JC Bach and Mozart.

Under artistic director Harry Bicket, the group has recorded a celebratory disc of concertos for Signum Classics, showcasing the talents of musicians from within the group, so violinists Nadja Zwiener and Tuomo Suni, violist Alfonso Leal del Ojo, cellist Joseph Crouch, and oboist Katharina Spreckelsen all take step-out roles from the ensemble. The concertos are quite a diverse bunch, by Evaristo Felice Dall'Abaco, Nicola Porpora, Alessandro Marcello, Giuseppe Tartini and Georg Philipp Telemann.

Quickening:

Songs by Robert Hugill to texts by English and Welsh poets now available from Amazon

four delicate, sensitive settings of Ivor Gurney, drawing performances of like quality. - it is Rosalind Ventris’s viola, weaving its way around and between the voice and William Vann’s piano, that is most beguilingGramphone magazine Jan 2018